this is how it starts (ready set go)

the faces change in the same old places

Resting her chin on her folded hands, Flora sighed and opened her eyes. Teaching was wonderful every day, of course; being able to impart some of her knowledge or, even better, some of her appreciation and love for nature and the world around her to other young fairies was amazing and gratifying. But she couldn't help thinking about the concerns Bloom and Musa kept raising about two of their students. Bloom, naturally, was concerned about the only girl in her class who hadn't shown a level of improvement anywhere near the others ("Is there something wrong with her? Is there something wrong with me?" Bloom fretted), and Musa couldn't stop trying to come up with some way to get this weird, quiet girl to speak up (as Musa kept insisting, "I know she's really smart, she's just so…" but the thought was never finished). It was enough to make Flora wish one, or both of the girls would take her class so she could see them for herself.

Flora frowned. There was that girl again, jogging across the quad. She had shown up at the beginning of the semester with all the other first-years looking as nervous and excited as any of them, and, as best Flora and the girls could tell, signed up for as many classes as she needed and more—but not been to a single one. It was the strangest thing that no one seemed to be able to figure out; she got all her work turned in, took every test, and knew all the information one would expect, but no one could ever recall having actually seen her in a classroom.

According to school records, which the girls had gained access to this year (finally) as official teachers, her name was Lola and she was from a planet called Conticeo. According to Stella, who made it a habit to give students fashion advice on as regular a basis as she could manage, it was utterly unfair that the girl always managed to look like she had just stepped out of a fashion magazine. Aisha raved about her athletic prowess and Musa complained about how pop-rock all her music was, but no one had been able to gather any really useful information about her and as far as Flora knew, none of them had ever actually spoken to her. In fact, Flora wasn't sure she had ever seen Lola speak to any other students, either. Bloom and Musa should introduce her to their problematic girls, she thought wryly, maybe they could all work each other out.

"Hey, Flora!"

The flower fairy perked up and grinned at Aisha, walking in and sitting on the table. "Aisha," she said, grateful to have something to distract her from thinking about problematic students. "How were your classes today?"

Aisha threw up her hands and threw her head back melodramatically, squeezing her eyes shut. "None of these girls understand the delicate balance between being able to fly like a kid and being able to fly like a real fairy!"

Flora giggled. "Having trouble with the back flips?"

"It's not like they're hard!"

"Well, these girls are new to it, give them time," Flora tried to reassure her friend. "Anything else weighing you down?"

Aisha straightened up and slid off the desk, turning to rest her forearms on it and face Flora eye-to-eye. "Have you been thinking at all about these students Bloom and Musa have been telling us about?"

Flora barely kept from groaning her frustration and burying her head in her hands. "A little," she said instead. "I try not to; I don't want to get in their way, I mean. Why do you ask?"

"I…" Aisha shook her head and sighed. "I don't know. Something about this doesn't seem quite right to me. I mean, the girl in Bloom's class with all those problems, and then the girl in Musa's class who just seems to know everything—I mean, Musa's said she gets full marks on just about everything, but she never talks!" She stood up, hand on her hip. "And that girl from where is it, Conticeo, who keeps roaming campus all the time, what's with her? Have any of us ever seen her in any classes? Ever?"

Flora shook her head. "I don't think so. I haven't seen her really interact with any students either, though, she doesn't seem to spend a whole lot of time on campus." She cocked her head thoughtfully, drumming her fingers on the table. "Do you know where she lives?"

"We could find out," Aisha said, leaning forward. "We ought to visit her, make sure she's doing all right on her own."

"You motives seem less than pure," Flora joked. Truthfully, she was curious about this mysterious girl; she had to have roommates, and it would probably be interesting to get their take on her situation (if she even had one).

Aisha's grin was deviously bright. "Let's get Tecna."

---

"Certainly not!"

"What d'you mean, 'no'?"

Flora ran her hand through her bangs and closed her eyes. This wouldn't devolve into a fight; it was nowhere near that important. But under the current circumstances—they were all tense and tired from handling their own classes and they were having trouble figuring out the appropriate amount of work to give students such that they didn't have to spend all their free time grading—Aisha might be highly strung enough to blow it out of proportion. "Girls," she said, calmly as she could manage, "let's think about this for a moment. Tecna, we're not going to break into this poor girl's room; we just want to know where she lives. Aisha, we can find this information out in other ways if Tecna doesn't want to get involved."

"Hey now," Tecna said, putting her hand up. "I never said that. You haven't even told me why you want to check up on this poor girl."

"You know that girl who roams around campus but never goes to classes?" Aisha said instantly, pointing out the window as if that would help. "We looked her up last week on the student registrar, remember?"

"Lola," Tecna said, nodding, "I remember."

"Well," Aisha confided, "we think it's a bit suspicious that she never seems to go to classes, yet she always has good grades and a firm grasp of the material. Doesn't that seem a little odd to you?"

Tecna frowned, opening the registrar on her computer. "I suppose it does. I had never really thought about it, but it doesn't mean she's doing anything illegal, necessarily."

"We just want to check up on her," Flora said, raising her hands in what she hoped was a placating gesture. "Make sure she's getting on all right in her spare time, that she's not hurting herself or missing sleep."

"Mm-hmm." Tecna nodded. "I see. Well, if that's all you want to do, I suppose I can help you. Do you suppose you should let Bloom and Musa know about this?"

Flora nodded as Aisha shook her head. "Come on now, we should," Flora pressed. "They've got problems with those two girls of theirs, we shouldn't keep another struggling students secret from them."

"Exactly, they've got enough problems with those two girls," Aisha countered. "Why bother them with this other girl? The situations probably aren't even related."

"How about we tell them about the plan?" Tecna suggested. "They can come along if they want, but it doesn't need to be a request."

Flora and Aisha exchanged an affirming glance. "Sounds good to me," Aisha offered as Flora nodded her agreement.

---

Musa, who had agreed to come immediately (whereas Bloom had sided with Aisha—she had enough on her plate with her one almost-but-not-quite-failing student and wanted to offer her some extra help, but thanks for asking), knocked on the door to the room listed as Lola's. She had been written up as having two roommates, but they had not been named and no one had felt like trolling the entire registrar on the off chance that they would stumble upon two girls living in the same triple. Noise within the room told them that at least one of the roommates was there, but there was no voice calling them in or allowing them to open the door. Musa knocked again.

"Anyone there?" Aisha called.

A girl spoke quietly inside the room, her voice otherwise unintelligible from the outside, before the doorknob turned and the door opened a crack.

"Who is it?" someone called.

"Teachers," Musa said plainly as Aisha moved to push the door open the rest of the way. It didn't budge an inch, although they couldn't see a jamb or anyone holding it closed. "Can we come in?"

Footsteps from inside the room; someone wearing socks walked closer to the door. It suddenly occurred to Flora that none of them had seen Lola up close, other than a snapshot of her on the first day of school; would they even recognize her if she came to the door?

The apparently shy young girl who let them in stared up at them with deep green eyes, nervously twirling her long hair around her fingers and biting her lower lip. "Yes ma'am?" she asked quietly, stepping back into the room to allow them access. "Have I done something wrong?"

Tecna, Aisha, and Musa appeared equally flabbergasted at the scene before them. They had all sort of expected some rebellious, self-righteous brat to throw open the doors and accuse them of invading her privacy and interrupting her work, not this demure, somewhat fragile-looking girl cowering at her desk in the face of authority. Flora stepped forward at once.

"No, of course not," she said soothingly. "We're just here to make sure nothing is going wrong in your life here; we haven't seen you around much and we were hoping you weren't under some sort of extracurricular pressure."

Relief flooded the girl's face as Flora laid a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry," she said sincerely. "I get so wrapped up in all this work, I don't get out of my room very much."

"Well, it's all right," Tecna assured her, stepping in next to Flora. "It's not a problem, of course, and you don't seem to be suffering for it; we just wanted to make sure you were all right."

Something dark and calculating flashed through the girl's eyes, gone as quickly as it appeared. "I'm doing just fine," she said, smiling. "I'm sorry for worrying the faculty, of course!"

"Say, Lola," Aisha said; the girl blinked a few times at the use of her name as Aisha stepped further into the room and looked around. "The registrar said you have roommates, but we couldn't find out who they were; do you girls get along okay?"

"Oh, goodness, yes!" Lola said, nodding. "We get along quiet well, all three of us, that's certainly not a problem. In fact, we work extremely well together, it's quiet remarkable."

"You don't say," Aisha pressed. "What are their names? As I said, we couldn't find the information in the network."

Lola looked suddenly puzzled, turning in her seat to face the still-investigating Aisha. "You couldn't?" she asked. "That's awfully strange; is it a malfunction in the network?"

"I don't think so," Tecna said, her voice more than a touch patronizing. Lola frowned at the tone but said nothing. "The information must be quarantined for some reason."

"Well, I certainly can't understand why," Lola said, shaking her head, "but if it's privatized for some reason, maybe I shouldn't go around giving it out?" She shrugged, looking away. "I'm very sorry, but I wouldn't feel comfortable giving out information that had been classified for any reason."

Flora patted her shoulder again. "That's all right, dear," she said kindly. "We can find it ourselves; better yet, we'll find out why it's locked up in the first place!"

Lola looked up with her deep green eyes opened wide and grinned, reassured. "Thank you all for checking up on me," she said, though it seemed she was speaking only to Flora. "I really am sorry about this mix-up, and I hope you find what you're looking for!"

Recognizing the implication that, as far as Lola was concerned, their business was complete, the girls waved their goodbyes and left; the door closed itself behind them.

"Anyone else think that was a little too perfect?" Aisha said suspiciously as soon as the door was shut. Musa rolled her eyes skyward as Flora looked perplexed.

"Because it wasn't what we were expecting?" Tecna said skeptically. "Because she wasn't a defiant teenager with black silk hangings on her walls and a fountain of blood in the middle of her witch altar? Expectations often lead to disappointment, it's not too surprising."

Aisha huffed a smothered sigh as they walked towards the teacher's lounge. "I mean, she was so different from what we expected. Maybe not the altar or the blood, but I was expecting at least some discontentment with, I don't know, something. But she seemed so happy, so well-adjusted. And what about that whole roommate thing? That was definitely her giving us the slip."

"There's no glitch in the network," Tecna said sourly. Flora shrugged.

"She doesn't know you're the fairy of technology, I bet," she said. "She was just offering up a suggestion, trying to help."

"I don't trust her," Aisha said, refusing to back down. Musa sighed.

"Something is a little weird with that whole roommate thing," she admitted. "We definitely need to find out who those girls are."

"My money's on Anna," Aisha said confidently. "That fragile little thing in Bloom's combat class? She tries really hard in my Flight class, but she's so…I don't know, so little. The two of them would get on well, I bet, they seem so similar."

Tecna sighed. "We'll see."